


more than yourself

by crookedfingers



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Voyeurism, obligatory statue jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-30 22:04:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10885824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedfingers/pseuds/crookedfingers
Summary: Jack examines the box of dye. The model smiles back at him with bland confidence. He looks like one of his cousins, Steve, on his mother’s side. They’re almost the same age. Ten weeks apart. The oldest of Steve’s three daughters will be a college freshman in a few weeks.Jack holds the box next to his face and looks into the mirror again, studying himself next to the younger, blonder model. “Hell,” he says, out loud, to no one. Then the takes the dye and goes to Gabriel’s office.





	more than yourself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stepsister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stepsister/gifts).



> Happy ~~(...and belated)~~ birthday to stepsister, who deserves every nice thing in the world - but will have to settle for this, instead.
> 
> And sincerest thanks to [solmaru](https://twitter.com/solmaru) for help and suggestions!

Jack’s routine checkup is exactly that—routine—up until the last few moments. He’s already been given a copy of the new meal plan submitted by his nutritionist and scheduled his next appointment when Dr. Khutashvili clears his throat and says, a little haltingly and without making eye contact, “Actually, I have one more thing to give you.” He makes his way to one of the examination room cabinets, opens it, and produces a small cardboard box. He offers the box at arm's length, and Jack takes it.  
  
“What’s this?” he asks, unnecessarily. He can see exactly what it is as soon as it’s in his hands. He stares blankly at the box, and then stares blankly at Dr. Khutashvili. “Dye? Hair dye? For… my hair?”  
  
“This is not a, a medical matter,” Dr. Khutashvili says, more flustered than Jack has ever seen him. He’s been Jack’s primary doctor for a long time. “So this is not my area to— That is to say, I’m not making any professional suggestions, or, ah— Well, I was—”  
  
“Thank you, doctor,” Jack says, sparing him from the agony of further explanation. “Is there anything else?”  
  
“No, no,” he answers quickly. “That is all. I will see you for your next appointment, Strike Commander Morrison. Good day.”  
  
And with that, Dr. Khutashvili excuses himself from the room at a near run, leaving Jack alone with his new box of hair dye and a fresh little puncture wound in his self esteem.  
  
He goes back to his quarters afterward, leans his hands on the bathroom vanity, and stands there looking at himself in the mirror for three or four minutes, turning his head back and forth. It’s not as though he hasn’t noticed his hair fading, or the dusting of silver at his temples, but he had hoped, optimistically, that it was not apparent to anyone _else_. Or, no. He’d just hoped it didn’t _matter_.  
  
But everything matters. His mannerisms, the way he talks, the way he looks: it’s the veneer on Overwatch’s image, and Overwatch’s image determiners, in myriad ways, what they can _do_.  
  
Jack examines the box of dye. The model smiles back at him with bland confidence. He looks like one of his cousins, Steve, on his mother’s side. They’re almost the same age. Ten weeks apart. The oldest of Steve’s three daughters will be a college freshman in a few weeks.  
  
Jack holds the box next to his face and looks into the mirror again, studying himself next to the younger, blonder model. “Hell,” he says, out loud, to no one. Then the takes the dye and goes to Gabriel’s office.  
  
Gabriel laughs at him. He laughs so hard that he has to lean against a wall to collect himself, and there’s nothing Jack can do but stand there patiently, the flimsy edges of box turning pulpy in his grip, and wait for Gabriel to calm down.  
  
“I really needed that,” Gabriel says, eventually. He wipes at his eyes with one wrist.  
  
“Glad I could brighten your day,” he deadpans. He’s not angry. Hearing Gabriel laugh is worth the cost to his ego.  
  
Gabriel cocks his head. “Iriko actually gave this to you personally? Face to face?”  
  
“Yeah; but I’m pretty sure he was just put up to it by someone else. He was embarrassed to bring it up.”  
  
“Hm. Didn’t say who wanted him to do it?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Probably Monica.”  
  
Jack can’t stop himself from laughing. “You never give Monica a break,” he accuses—but Gabriel is probably right. Monica Belline is their public image consultant, which means she's devoted to making sure he knows everyone's titles before state dinners, and remembers which utensil to use, and to ensuring that every hair is in place before he shows his face for interviews, speeches, and other appearances. She’s very good at what she does. She’s also one of the only people who can reliably bring out Gabriel’s pettiness without so much as being in the same room as him. Jack suspects that this is because Monica is the most Gabriel-like person that he knows: always a step ahead; extremely secure in her opinions; and exceptionally good at getting people to do what she wants without directly asking. “I don’t know, maybe. Why wouldn’t she just give it to me in person?”  
  
“Because you’d fucking argue about it. Someone knows you too well,” Gabriel says, his mouth crooking up. “They knew you wouldn’t put up a big fight if the suggestion came from your doctor. I bet you just smiled and said _thank you_.”  
  
“I fucking did,” he admits, pinching the bridge of his nose and laughing again, ruefully. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even ask him any questions.” He studies Gabriel from behind the cover of his hand for a couple of seconds, then reaches toward the spot next to Gabriel’s ear where his hair isn’t entirely covered. “Your grays stand out more than mine. Why hasn’t anyone tried to manipulate _you_ into dyeing your hair?”  
  
Gabriel knocks his hand away, lightly, just before Jack actually touches him. “I don’t have your pretty face, Morrison. Who gives a shit about my fucking hair?”  
  
Jack lets his arm drop. He’s asked an insensitive question with an obvious answer: no one needs Gabriel Reyes to dye his hair because it doesn’t matter what he look like. He’s not meant to be seen. Not in the same way. Jack isn’t sure how to answer, but Gabriel doesn’t give him a chance. He jerks his head slightly, like he’s shaking off a fly, and says: “I’d go crazy if I had to deal with all this micromanaging bullshit. Don’t know how you stand it. What’d he give you, anyway? Show me the box.”  
  
Jack passes him the dye, and Gabriel studies it intently. Jack watches his eyes go back and forth between his face and the box of dye.  
  
“Well,” he says at last, “they got you the wrong color.”  
  
“What the fuck are you talking about, wrong color? It’s—no. It’s just yellow. The color’s fine. Give me that.” Jack grabs for the box, but Gabriel whisks it aside.  
  
“It’s not fine; it’s wrong. Your hair won’t look the way it does on the box, and it’ll be obvious you dyed it.”  
  
“If someone really wants me to dye my hair, don’t they want it to be obvious? I don’t care what it looks like.”  
  
“If you haven’t fucking noticed, your opinion doesn’t count. And _I_ care because _I_ have to look at you.”  
  
“Well, but - okay - first: how do you know anything about hair dye? You don’t have hair.”  
  
“I know plenty of people who have hair.”  
  
“…Weirdly cryptic,” Jack says. “And unconvincing. What’ve you picked up about soil alkalinity from knowing someone who grew up on a farm, huh?”  
  
Gabriel considers his response for a few seconds. “It’s… a problem.”  
  
“Well,” Jack says, slowly. “I’ll give you that one.” Gabriel looks more self-satisfied than is really warranted.  
  
“Just trust me on this. Come on; let’s get you something better.”  
  
“What, now? Right now?”  
  
“Is there a better time?”  
  
There is not. There will never be a good time to spend any part of the day comparing brands of artificial yellow, but Jack does not bother to say this. He just stares woefully at Gabriel and begs, “Don’t make me go to the commissary for fucking hair dye. It’ll become some kind of gossip thing.”  
  
“Jack,” Gabriel says, “I’d bet my pension that this dye came from the commissary and that it’s the only brand being stocked, so that’s exactly where we will _not_ go.”  
  
Fifteen minutes later, he’s crammed into the passenger’s seat as Gabriel drives them off base. It’s August, and swelteringly hot. The short walk to the car was enough to make him sweat, and he paws around at the dashboard, trying to set the air conditioning as high as possible, before Gabriel reaches past his hand and fixes the settings. Cold air blasts mercifully into his face. He’s glad he was already dressed lightly for the appointment with Dr. Khutashvili.  
  
They only exchange a few words as Gabriel drives ( _cold enough?_ \- _yeah, thanks_ ), and Jack doesn’t ask where he’s being taken. He just flips down the sun visor and sinks low in his seat. He brought his work tablet, and he puts all of his attention toward catching up on memos and messages. Most don’t require an actual response from him—he’s part of a string of multiple recipients included for the sake of awareness—but he outlines a few responses that he can finish drafting later.  
  
He’s feeling reasonably satisfied with his productivity when the car slows and then stops, and he looks through the windshield to find that they’ve parked in front of a little storefront: an actual salon with an abstract logo on the sign. He doesn’t see a name anywhere.  
  
“Oh,” he says, drawing back. He turns toward Gabriel. “No.”  
  
“Did you think we were going to a Walgreens?” Gabriel asks.  
  
“Yes,” he says, despairingly.  
  
“Well, relax. You don’t have to get your hair done here. We’re just picking up some stuff.”  
  
Jack presses himself back into the seat and tugs at his seatbelt, pulling the strap away from his chest, but doesn’t touch the buckle. “This is such a fucking waste of time, Gabriel,” he mutters.  
  
Gabriel goes quiet. The car is already turning warm without the air running, but Jack doesn’t open his door, and neither does Gabriel. Then Gabriel says, “Alright. You can stay in the car. But remember that you don’t get a say in what I buy. And,” he adds, “I’m not leaving the air conditioning on.”  
  
“At least roll the windows down,” Jack protests.  
  
Gabriel rolls each window half down. Then he shuts Jack into the car and disappears into the salon. There’s too much glare on the storefront windows for Jack to see inside.  
  
Gabriel has only been gone for a couple of minutes before the car becomes stifling enough that Jack gives up trying to get any work done and just sits there in overheated discomfort. He puts an arm out the window; then, finding this unsatisfactory, opens the car door and sticks a leg outside with the hope of catching any passing breeze. There isn’t any. He plucks at the collar of his shirt.  
  
Gabriel is carrying a little bag with the salon’s logo on it when he comes back a few moments later. He sets the bag behind the driver’s seat without saying anything, then makes Jack close the door before starting the ignition. The drive back, Jack expects, is going to be awkward. He looks out the window instead of at Gabriel as he starts the car and reverses out of their parking spot. But when they reach the stop sign at the next corner, Gabriel pauses at the intersection without making the turn that he’s signaling. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Then he says, “You hungry? Want to get something to eat?”  
  
He is hungry. He’s almost always hungry. But he doesn’t make meal choices based on hunger anymore because if he actually eats as much as he wants to, when he wants to, he puts on fat. It’s been that way ever since a battery of drugs turned him into a bigger, stronger, faster, smarter soldier. His body wants to hang onto everything it can. It’s in constant crisis mode, trying to store resources for a forever-impending emergency. The weight doesn’t really slow him down, but it’s not the right “look” for him, and he’s not the one who gets to decide what that means.  
  
Thus: the meal plans, the exercise routines designed to keep body fat to a minimum, the tolerable but almost-constant hunger pangs. But those are small complaints; he has it easy compared to Gabriel.  
  
He hesitates over the question, knowing he’ll have to answer for it later if he spoils his meal plan—but if he refuses, Gabriel won’t get anything for himself, either. So he shrugs, casually, and says, “Sure. You have something in mind?”  
  
Gabriel does, and twenty-five minutes later they’re eating enormous roasted pork Caribbean sandwiches with the car doors open, both of them leaning out of the car on opposite sides with their feet on the ground and grease seeping through their fingers. The sandwich is spicy, and fatty, and sloppy, and absolutely the best thing Jack has eaten in months. He gets a little emotional over the last couple of bites, and he licks his fingers, shamelessly, when he’s done. Then he turns himself sideways and folds his legs back into the car, scrubs a napkin between his hands, and drops the waxed paper wrapper from his sandwich into the empty paper bag. Gabriel is just finishing the last of his own sandwich. There’s a single cup of coffee, strong and sweet, sitting in the cup holder between them; Jack drinks the first three mouthfuls, then hands the rest of the cup to Gabriel, who throws the whole thing back, still steaming, like it’s nothing. Then Gabriel grabs the paper bag from him, adds the empty coffee cup and his own heap of napkins and wrappers, and ducks out of the car to dispose of the trash.  
  
Jack closes the car door, puts on his seatbelt, and picks up his tablet again, but he only stares at it dully, scrolling through messages without absorbing what he’s reading. Already the heat and heavy food are catching up with him, his focus lagging. He should have taken more of the coffee. Gabriel gets back into the car and waits for him to finish yawning before he says, “So, do you want to take the scenic route back?”  
  
The right answer is _no_ ; they don’t have time for that. But it’s so unprecedented for Gabriel make two requests in a row, even in such an indirect way, that Jack finds himself tucking his tablet onto the seat beside his leg and saying, “Sounds good.”  
  
When they get up to highway speeds some minutes later, Gabriel cuts the air conditioning and rolls the windows down. The inside of the car turns drowsily warm all over again. The middle of Jack’s back starts to sweat against the seat, but the breeze licking against the front of his body feels good. He slouches back and hangs an arm out the window, and the wind catches at his sleeve, making it flap, and streams through his fingers, and flows along the underside of his arm and all the way to his chest. He stares at himself in the side view mirror, turning his head from side to side, and considers his hair. It doesn’t look so bad, does it? But the light makes everything look overexposed, and everything about him looks equally washed out. He glances sideways at Gabriel, studying him in profile: the little furrow at the corner of his mouth, the specks of white in his hair. He looks good.  
  
Jack extends his arm and puts his hand on Gabriel’s leg. Gabriel glances away from the road. “Hey,” he says, soft and inquisitive.  
  
“Hey,” he says back. He smiles, lazily. “The scenic route is nice.”  
  
He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t move his hand until they reach the base’s security checkpoint.

 

 

* * *

  
  
Gabriel wants him to dye his hair as soon as they get back on base. He protests. Can’t they do it some other time? Tomorrow? Later that night? Doesn’t _Commander Reyes_ have any work to do? Gabriel won’t hear any of it.  
  
“If you don’t do it now,” Gabriel says, “you’ll just keep making excuses not to.”  
  
“I will not,” he brazenly lies.  
  
But lies get him nowhere. Gabriel harasses and cajoles him all the way back to his quarters, but he insists on comparing the dyes for himself before Gabriel manages to herd him all the way into the bathroom.  
  
“I don’t know, Reyes, I don’t think you made the right call here.” He holds up the dye from Dr. Khutashvili so that the model can smile winningly out at Gabriel. “Just look at this guy. I trust him. He’s dependable. And he looks like my cousin, Steve, so I think this one has got to be the clear winner.”  
  
“He does, kind of,” Gabriel admits. But then he frowns up at Jack, unimpressed. “I thought you’d want to get this over with, but you keep stalling. Cut the shit.”  
  
Jack scowls, annoyance catching up with him all at once. “Oh, now you’re in a rush?”  
  
Gabriel's frown deepens, his eyes going narrow, and Jack gets his hand all the way to his temple, unthinkingly trying to drag a hand through his hair, before he remembers that he’s still holding a fucking box of dye in each hand. His arm falls away, limply. He’s being argumentative just for the sake of it because… because he hates that he has to do this, that it’s being expected of him without any warning or discussion, and he doesn’t even know, with certainty, by whom. He was grudgingly willing to go along with everything up until this point, but now that they’ve actually reached the the decisive moment, the reality of the entire situation angers him. If he dyes his hair once, he’ll have to _keep_ doing it for—how long, exactly? When will he be _allowed_ to go gray? Will he be expected to keep up this routine during long field missions, no matter the realities of time and resources? He doesn’t want another thing to monitor, to regulate, to plan around. He wants to be able to protest—this, and so many other things—but he rarely has the liberty to argue with politicians, or journalists, or his own damn staff. But here’s Gabriel, who doesn’t need him to be polite, or level-headed, or poised; who already knows all the worst and most unflattering things about him. Gabriel is the one unshakable thing in the world.

And an easy target, when no others are available.

“Sorry,” he mutters, jerking his shoulders a little. “I’m not happy about this, but— Sorry.”  
  
Gabriel says, “Hm,” which is as much of an acceptance of an apology as he ever gives, and steps forward to take the dyes from Jack’s hands. “Tell you what: if you’re so fucking attached to Cousin Steve here, we’ll use both of them so you can see the difference. One on each side.”  
  
Jack’s mouth twists. “That seems completely unnecessary.”  
  
“You’re going to have to deal with this yourself eventually, and I know you’re going to end up using that cheap shit if you don’t get to see how it looks. So, yeah, I’d consider it necessary.”  
  
There’s no option but to concede defeat as gracefully as possible.  
  
He’s made to sit on the bathroom vanity with his back to the mirror while Gabriel prepares the dye and combs it through his hair, with a small break between one side and the other to account for the difference in setting times. He kicks at Gabriel’s legs until Gabriel brings him his tablet so he can catch up on world news while the dye sets, and then Gabriel pushes him into the shower to rinse out the dye. When he emerges again, Gabriel flings a towel over him and scrubs at his head while he does his best to dry the rest of his own body. Gabriel won’t let him look at the mirror until his hair is completely dry, so he puts down the toilet lid and sits there with one towel around his waist and another around his shoulders, reviewing mission logs while Gabriel brushes his teeth, and flosses, and washes his face at the sink next to him.  
  
Finally, Gabriel comes over to run a hand through his hair. “Alright,” he says, “get up and take a look.”  
  
He looks ridiculous. Each side of his head is a completely distinct color. One half is a vivid, cartoonish yellow, every bit as bright as when he was seventeen. The other half is a softer, milder color—though he can’t tell if it actually looks natural on him, or if the proximity of the brighter dye just makes it look normal in comparison. He turns his head sideways to hide as much of the other color as possible, but he can’t make up his mind until Gabriel takes the towel off his shoulders and drapes it over half of his head, covering the brighter dye entirely. Suddenly, his face looks lighter and fresher. The effect is subtle, but he’s surprised to notice any difference at all. He reaches up and drags the towel from one side of his head to the other so that the brighter dye is the one exposed. If anything, the intensity of the color make the signs of age on his face—the grooves across his forehead, the creases next to his eyes—stand out even more.  
  
“So,” he says, clearing his throat, “which side is which?”  
  
Gabriel snatches the towel off his head and snaps it against his back.  
  
He raises his hands in surrender, laughing, and turns around to face Gabriel. “Well, are you satisfied with yourself? Now you’ve got to fix it.”  
  
“I have to fix it?” Gabriel asks. “There’d be nothing to fix if you hadn’t been such a pain in the ass. _You_ can fix it. You’ve got to learn how to do this for yourself.”  
  
“I don’t want to,” he says, knowing, even as he speaks, how utterly stupid and petulant this sounds. And Gabriel raises his eyebrows and gives him the only possible answer, the same implied answer to every other situation in which Jack has come up against some responsibility, some choice, some burden he does not want: “Too bad.”  
  
Jack says, “Right,” dully.  
  
Gabriel reaches for the little bag from the salon and rifles through it. He pulls out a series of items and places them on the counter top in a row. “I picked up some color stripper, and extra dye. Should last you awhile. And shampoo. It’ll help the color stay longer.”  
  
Jack picks up one of the products at random and stares at it without reading the label or paying any attention to what he’s holding. He sets it down again. He looks at Gabriel, and then he steps forward to kiss him, firmly, on the mouth. He mumbles, “Thanks,” and means it.

 

 

* * *

  
  
Ana notices his hair. She puts her hands right into it and laughs. “Oh, look at _you_. Are you trying to seduce someone younger?”  
  
No one else says a word.  
  
But, two days later, Jack has just endured a make-up artist sitting him down to dab concealer under his eyes before a conference call with Japan’s Minister of Defense when Monica Belline intercepts him at the door and says: “Wait.”  
  
“Hello, Monica,” he says, agreeably. “I haven’t forgotten about the divorce rumors; I won’t ask him about his wife.”  
  
“Good,” Monica says. “But that’s not it. Hold still.”  
  
She fiddles with something small in her hands, then reaches toward his face, and he stands obediently still as she smears a little dab of lip balm across his mouth. “Your lips looked dry.” Then she gives him a long, appraising look. “Did you do something different with your hair?”  
  
He answers without even thinking about it: “Changed my shampoo.”  
  
“Hm,” Monica says, neutrally, but there’s a shadow of satisfaction in her expression. “Well, it looks good. Good luck with your meeting.”  
  
He’s passed the test, and he’s pleased with the praise—and annoyed with himself for being pleased. But he can’t change what he’s already done, so he might as well take what satisfaction he can. He touches the thin, soft skin under his eye as he steps into the room to begin the call.  
  
Gabriel, meanwhile, turns himself back into a ghost. They continue to see one another regularly, and they have a dozen separate conversations—in meetings, in emails, over meals with any number of people who want an hour of their time and attention—but it’s all professional and to-the-point. Gabriel always backs off after he takes too much of Jack’s time, unplanned. It’s something they’ve never had to discuss. They’ve always understood their priorities.  
  
And yet.  
  
And yet Jack finds himself, in moments of idleness—while he showers; while he waits for elevators to arrive; while he’s put on hold during calls to Director Petras—remembering Gabriel’s thumb brushing the back of his neck as he worked on his hair. He thinks about Gabriel leaning over the sink with water dripping off his face. Even now, after half of his lifetime, the simplest memories of Gabriel Reyes can still make him feel wild with the intensity of missing him, and wanting him. He’d been there, alone with Gabriel in his own rooms, and not done anything about it. He feels stupid, now, for letting his embarrassment and frustration put him in such a rush to get back to work. His mind supplies pointless, self-indulgent fantasies about how things could have gone: pushing Gabriel to his knees on the bathroom tile; dragging him into the shower and sliding between his thighs; cradling his head and pulling Gabriel’s lower lip into his mouth.  
  
And Gabriel also has something on his mind—though not, he suspects, the same thing that he does. Jack can see it in the set of his shoulders; the way his eyes slide away, for just a second or two at a time when his attention isn’t required; the deepening of the creases at the corners of his eyes. Those are the only clues he gets: Gabriel doesn’t say a word about anything personal. The problem could be anything; it might have nothing to do with him at all. But anything that concerns Gabriel concerns him, too, by association. He considers, a dozen times over, pulling Gabriel aside to actually _talk_ to him without any other pretenses, but there’s never enough time, it’s never the right opportunity.  
  
So Jack creates his own opportunity just shy of one in the morning on a Wednesday after confirming with Athena that Commander Reyes is still in his office and that the rest of the hall is empty for the night.  
  
Gabriel doesn’t seem the slightest surprised when he lets himself into the room. He just glances, impassively, over his shoulder and says, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jack answers. “Do you?”  
  
Gabriel isn’t at his desk. He’s standing, bare-headed, toward the far side of the room, where two big photos are projected onto the wall. They seem to be the before-and-after images of some kind of compound that was destroyed by a fire, or perhaps a bombing. Several points on both photos have been circled. Gabriel’s holding a tablet and stylus, and both photos are overlaid with columns of notes in his small, dense handwriting. Jack takes a hard look at the photos, trying to connect them to recent news or briefings, but he only manages to gather that the site is somewhere where people drive on the left side of the road before Gabriel deactivates the projection, and the room’s overhead lights, which have been drastically dimmed, slowly return to about eighty percent normal brightness. Gabriel uses red light to reduce eye strain when he works late, and the effect is unfailingly eerie. Jack feels like he’s entered a space that’s cut off from the rest of the world, like a submarine in deep water.  
  
Since Gabriel isn’t in his chair, Jack takes it—then leans back, frowning. “Why is your chair so much softer than mine?” He squeezes the armrests for emphasis.  
  
“That’s just part of the trade-off,” Gabriel says blandly. “You get the statue, I get the comfortable chair.”  
  
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” Jack drawls, matching Gabriel's tone. “Since I’m the one who spends all my time sitting on my ass, shouldn’t I be the one with the comfortable chair?”  
  
He's rewarded with a smirk. “Sure, but the problem is that you’ve been sitting your ass in the same chair for the last ten years, which is why both of them are so fucking flat.”  
  
“Hey,” he says, reproachfully, but he doesn’t hold back a laugh. This kind of harassment is a good sign: Gabriel is happy to see him.  
  
“I put in a request for a new chair at the beginning of the year. It’s just newer, that’s all.”  
  
“Oh. You mean we can ask for new ones?”  
  
“Yes, Jack,” Gabriel sighs, “you can just ask for a new one.”  
  
Jack considers this information seriously. “Hm. Well, mine’s probably got another good four, five years in it before I need a new one. But, thanks for the tip; I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
Gabriel just stares at him for several seconds, then bursts into a big, resounding laugh. Jack grins back at him, head cocked.  
  
“Do you have any other wisdom to share as long as I’m here, Commander Reyes?”  
  
“Yeah, here’s a little tip: if you interrupt someone's work to act like an ass, you can make up for it by sucking their dick.”  
  
Jack murmurs, “Well…” and tips his head back, running a hand up the length of his own throat. Gabriel’s eyes track the motion. He steps forward and sets the tablet down on the corner of the desk, which is otherwise bare except for a mostly-full glass of water on a coaster and a little opaque plastic medicine bottle. They look at the bottle at the same time. Antacid tablets. Jack sits up straight, dropping his hand from his throat, and Gabriel stalks around to his side of the desk. He opens the topmost drawer and sweeps the bottle into it, then bangs the drawer shut with the side of his fist. He picks up the glass of water, then sets it down again. Jack shifts forward to the edge of the chair.  
  
“Is your stomach bothering you?” he asks.  
  
Gabriel it still looking at the glass of water. “It’s fine.”  
  
“It’s ‘fine?’”  
  
“It’s not any worse than usual.”  
  
Jack sucks on his teeth, feeling his forehead crease. “Alright. Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind, then?”  
  
Gabriel’s eyes swivel toward him. He leans back against the desk, folding his arms over his chest. “That’s a long conversation to get into at one in the morning. Want to be more specific?”  
  
“Well,” Jack drones, “that’s hard to do, since I’m not working off of any information that you’ve deigned to share. But it’s something you’ve been thinking about since the day we dyed my hair. Am I right? I don’t think it’s about work—or, not directly about work. Is it— Did I say something that bothered you? I know that I was being, uh, a little difficult, but…”  
  
Gabriel shifts his weight. He says, “No.”  
  
Jack waits for a moment to see if he’ll continue. Gabriel rarely speaks off the cuff. It’s not uncommon for him to give only the barest answer if he’s caught unprepared for an important question, only to elaborate on the response of his own volition once he’s had time to choose his words. But this does not seem to be one of those times. Several seconds pass without any further reaction. Jack considers standing up, but, no. Gabriel will be more at ease if they’re not eye-to-eye.  
  
“‘No’ meaning - what, exactly?” Jack presses. “It’s not about me? It’s not about me _or_ work? Is it— Have you been having some kind of pain flare-up this entire time?”  
  
Gabriel says, “Jack,” and then he just sighs instead of saying anything else. He looks at the wall behind Jack’s head. But at least his face reveals something honest about the tone of his thoughts: there are deep lines between his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth. Nothing at all happens for what feels like a very long time, and Jack, sick at heart, is preparing to excuse himself, miserable that he’s spoiled this chance to talk but knowing that it’s better to give up than to pry into Gabriel too aggressively, when Gabriel suddenly says, “What do we do when they decide to make more super soldiers?”  
  
Jack’s mind goes blank. “Uhhh,” he manages to say at last, eloquently. “I don’t know. Who’s ‘they?’”  
  
Gabriel’s eyes meet his again, and he frowns. “Anyone: the UN, Petras, an investor with enough money to sink into an enhancement program.”  
  
“SEP wasn’t just expensive; it was costly in a lot of ways. Jesus, I don’t have to remind you of the success rate. Who would want to take on all the risk and responsibility for that kind of gamble? There’d be a humanitarian uproar, besides.”  
  
“Not if the public doesn’t know about it while it’s happening. And you’re imagining a repeat of we went through, but we’re in an entirely different place now when it comes to the science. SEP was just a bunch of scared bastards stumbling around in the dark, trying to invent the light bulb with a jar and some paper clips. But just think about how much more data is available now: thousands of observation hours and trial logs from the whole fucking program, plus constant updates from the both of us. They’ve practically got you collecting samples every time you piss. You think they couldn’t do better a second time? Couldn’t produce the kind of soldiers they _really_ wanted to have?”  
  
Jack’s brow furrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“You damn well know that that means.”  
  
“Even so,” he says, carefully skirting the deep black pit that Gabriel has suddenly opened at his feet, “SEP was a response to a global crisis. The world still has problems, I know, I know, but there’s no reason for more super soldiers. What purpose could they serve that some other option couldn’t? It’s not as though _we’re_ single-handedly solving problems that no one else can.”  
  
Gabriel just looks at him for a long moment, and then he says, “When people want to have something, they make the reason.”  
  
Jack leans back into the chair and gives a soft, mirthless laugh. “That sounds about right,” he admits. “Damn, have you been thinking about all of this because of my fucking hair? You just noticed that I’m not as bright and shiny as I used to be and thought, hey, I bet someone in the world wants some younger, better super soldiers?”  
  
Gabriel smiles wanly and moves his shoulders. “There’ve been a few reasons.”  
  
“Yeah? Such as?”  
  
But Gabriel looks away from him again. “Don’t do this patronizing shit with me. You don’t actually want to talk about this right now.”  
  
Jack sits forward, straightening his back, digging his fingers into the armrests. “What? I - come on. Why the fuck would you think that? I came here to talk to you.”  
  
“No, you came here to _appease_ me,” Gabriel snaps. “You wanted this to be easy. You think I’m being paranoid, that I’m just imagining things that aren’t there because I’m fucking over-worked or something. You want me to calm down, but you don’t actually want to think about something you can’t see.”  
  
“Gabriel,” he groans, “that’s unfair. You know I’ll listen if you really want to talk about something. But I have to be skeptical if I don’t have enough information. Do you have some kind of evidence about any of this?”  
  
“Ah,” Gabriel says, his voice gone stiff. “That’s right. You’re just being _responsible_.”  
  
Jack fights to keep his expression as neutral as possible. This isn’t going in the right direction. God, what happened? Gabriel was happy to see him, and now they’re at the edge of an argument. No, they’re already having an argument; it’s a _fight_ he wants to avoid. Jack swallows. He can still salvage this. But Gabriel’s right: he’s not in the the mindset to have a level-headed conversation about such a far-fetched hypothetical problem. They’ll only frustrate one another. His best option is just to try to lighten the mood, even at the risk of losing Gabriel’s respect by avoiding the subject. So Jack lets out a big, theatrical sigh, braces his elbow on the armrest, and props his cheek on his fist. “And here I thought you were going to accuse me of being _irresponsible_ for coming here to suck you off and send you to bed. I’m off my game tonight.”  
  
Gabriel’s eyebrows twitch a little higher on his forehead, and Jack braces for the rebuke and dismissal he’s certain will follow. But then Gabriel’s shoulders give a kind of helpless jerk and he lets out a throaty, almost reluctant laugh. Jack can almost see him going through a kind of physical effort to drop the topic. Gabriel shakes his head. “You should have gotten right to the point, then.”  
  
“I thought you’d appreciate the foreplay,” he says, flooded with relief. Gabriel scoffs at him, but his expression is lighter, and his shoulders have relaxed slightly. “Well, seriously, how much sleep have you gotten lately? Is there any chance that you’re ready to leave for the night?”  
  
“Can’t. Won’t have any extra time in the morning.”  
  
“Can you at least give yourself a break, then?”  
  
“What do you think I’m doing right now, Morrison? You’ve got three more minutes before I kick your ass out of here so I can get some work done.” But his tone is mild and unhurried, and he seems calm again.  
  
“Alright,” Jack says. “I’ve done more with less.”  
  
And he stands up, steps forward, and pulls Gabriel in by the back of his head to kiss him. Gabriel’s arms are still folded against his chest, and Jack pins them in place with his own body as he tucks his thumb behind Gabriel’s ear and pushes him against the desk. Gabriel doesn’t respond much at first—he seems to think that this is only a fleeting kiss—but his mouth gradually softens and opens when Jack takes his lower lip between his teeth. There’s old coffee on Gabriel’s breath, and maybe a hint of chalkiness from the antacids. Jack sucks on his lip, and then he’s pressing his tongue into Gabriel’s mouth. Gabriel works his arms out from between their chests, and one hand wraps around Jack’s upper arm. But Jack intercepts Gabriel’s other arm as it starts to fall to his side and, instead, guides Gabriel’s hand between his own legs. He envelops Gabriel’s hand in his own and squeezes down on his fingers, making them curl until Gabriel is cupping himself through his clothes.  
  
Gabriel says “mmh” and tilts his head away, his expression inquisitive and more than a little suspicious. “Hey, now; what do you think you’re doing?” His voice has gone just the slightest bit rough.  
  
Calmly and pointedly, Jack rocks his hand over Gabriel’s, adjusting the pressure of his grip. “Well, since you only gave me three minutes, I figured I’d help you get started on something that you could do to relax yourself a little more.”  
  
“Are you fucking serious?” Gabriel huffs, striking a delicate balance between disapproval and amusement. “In my _office_?”  
  
“You already know no one’s going to walk in.”  
  
“Just you,” Gabriel accuses.  
  
“Just me,” he agrees. He leans forward, his nose sliding against Gabriel’s, and they breath against one another’s mouths, not quite kissing, as Jack squeezes, and releases, and squeezes, and Gabriel starts to get hard under their overlapping hands. His other hand dips away from Gabriel’s ear, and his thumb goes to Gabriel’s throat, pressing under his Adam’s apple until it moves against his hand when Gabriel swallows. “I think my three minutes are up now.”  
  
“Strike Commander Morrison is going to let a subordinate throw him out of a room?” Gabriel asks, snidely, and squeezes his arm: _stay_.  
  
“He’s making up his mind about whether he wants to get some goddamn sleep while he still has the chance to get away.” He shoves a foot between Gabriel’s boots and drops his hand from Gabriel’s throat to his chest, where he rubs circles until Gabriel’s nipple stiffens through his shirt. He catches it, a little roughly, with his thumbnail. “Are you going to let me bend you over this desk?”  
  
Gabriel rears back, looking genuinely scandalized. “This is _my_ fucking office. I’ll bend _you_ over the desk.”  
  
“Ah,” Jack says. “Well, you see, I only brought extra-large condoms, so I’m afraid they wouldn’t fit you.”  
  
“You’re right,” Gabriel agrees. “They’d be too tight.”  
  
Jack says, “Goddammit,” with heartfelt regret, and wearily closes his eyes. “I set that right up for you, didn’t I?”  
  
“Couldn’t have done it better myself,” Gabriel says with a lilt in his voice that means he's grinning.  
  
Jack opens his eyes and squares his shoulders. “Alright,” he says. “I guess there’s only one option for you, then.” And he drops his hand lower, and undoes the buckle of Gabriel’s belt, and unbuttons his pants, and pulls down the zipper. He has to use both hands to tug Gabriel’s pants just a little lower on his hips, and then he takes Gabriel’s unresisting hand and uses it to draw his cock out. He’s half hard, and he thickens in his own grip as Jack holds his wrist and uses it to guide his hand back and forth. He keeps the pace slow and controlled, which Gabriel tolerates for a couple of moments before he huffs like a bull and says, “Jack.”  
  
So Jack takes his hand away, and finishes pulling Gabriel’s belt through its loops, and tugs Gabriel’s pants and briefs further down his thighs. Then he kneels on the floor to unlace Gabriel’s boots. Gabriel lifts each foot in turn as Jack slides off one boot and sock, then the other. Then, from the floor, he drags his fingernails slowly and firmly down Gabriel’s legs, stripping them bare. He sets Gabriel's clothes carefully aside. Gabriel sinks a hand into his hair, and Jack runs his own hand back up the outside of Gabriel’s leg as he lets himself be pulled up—but only far enough so that he can sit back in Gabriel’s chair. He slouches back, shaking his head free, and kicks Gabriel’s feet farther apart. Gabriel’s hand is still wrapped around himself, though he’s holding still as he watches Jack with interest and suspicion.  
  
“Well, go on,” Jack says. “And feel free to take your time. This chair is really comfortable.”  
  
“Ha,” Gabriel says. “You know I don’t like rush jobs." And he reaches back to brace himself on the desk and arches, flauntingly, as he starts to pump his hand with a real sense of purpose. He’s fully hard now, with a bead of fluid swelling at the tip of his cock. Jack spreads his own legs as wide as the chair will allow and, after a moment, slides a hand into his lap to adjust himself through his clothes. Gabriel watches him with a heavy expression, but he doesn’t reach out or pull away from the desk. They’re not far apart: Gabriel’s knees are almost between his. They could easily touch one another. But neither one of them breaks the small distance Jack has created.  
  
Gabriel’s posture relaxes in gradual increments: his eyes close, his head lolls forward, his shoulders drop. Even the proud arch of his back softens. The room is very quiet, and Jack realizes, after some moments, that he is breathing in sync with Gabriel: through his mouth, a little raggedly. In the strange red light, everything feels unreal and achingly intimate, like this is an act carried out in private; like they’re not really even in the same room together; like Jack is looking, somehow, straight through a wall and is seeing something in which he’s not an actual participant. Is this how Gabriel would masturbate while alone, with absolutely no one there to know or see it? There’s nothing showy about the way he’s touching himself now, but it goes right through Jack all the same, turning his whole body heavy and unwieldy and hot.  
  
His eyelids sink lower; his blood beats thickly against the tips of his fingers; his own cock swells insistently. He has to unbutton his pants and ease the zipper down to give himself a little relief. Gabriel doesn’t even seem to notice the rasp of the zipper, and Jack runs a thumb back and forth along the inseam at the very top of his thigh.  
  
For a few hazy, unhurried moments, both of them simply drift within themselves, and then Gabriel turns some kind of corner starts to drag himself out of it. The muscles of his jaw bunch as he squeezes his teeth together, and the line between his eyebrows reforms. He shifts his feet, one after the other, and his shoulders gradually curl forward until his upper body has been pulled into a tense comma. He breathes roughly through his nose. The motion of his hand turns fast and desperate.  
  
Jack comes back to himself too slowly. He blinks several times, then struggles to sit upright. He hesitates, and then touches Gabriel’s elbow with the tips of two fingers. “Hey,” he says, gently. “Are you all right?”  
  
Gabriel’s head jerks up. It takes a couple of seconds for his eyes to come into focus. His lip curls. “You know… you know I—”  
  
Jack says, "I know, I know," and he stands up, and steps between Gabriel’s legs, and half lifts, half pushes him back onto the desk until he’s sitting with his toes just brushing the floor. He circles Gabriel’s neck with both hands and drags their mouths together once, and then again, and again. Gabriel lets all the air out of his lungs in one burst. “Do you want to stop?”  
  
And here it is: Gabriel’s own version of being hungry all the time. Gabriel Reyes can endure pain, and hunger, and exhaustion like no one else Jack knows. SEP didn’t ruin his ability to feel, but it did make his threshold for everything— _everything_ —just that much higher.  
  
What this means: Gabriel can feel the pain of a broken foot and still run on it for miles, if he has to.  
  
What this also means: Jack has been fucked to the point of outright sobbing, overstimulated beyond endurance, before Gabriel finishes.  
  
What this _also_ means: Gabriel sometimes gets so frustrated chasing an orgasm he can’t reach that he’d rather just stop, cool off, and get on with other business.  
  
For years they’ve made a habit of telling themselves, and one another, to just take the bad with the good and make the best of it. They’d been lucky to get out of SEP with _side effects_. Gabriel’s resilience had made him peerless during the Crisis, able to push through physical limitations again and again to get things done, and, later, made him ideal for the rough work of Blackwatch. He’d never complained. But the advantages of that resilience are not as valuable now as they used to be, and the effects have intensified. Gabriel has spent years growing increasingly isolated from his own body while spending more mental energy than is ever required of most people just reminding himself to eat, and drink, and sleep, and exactly how much of each is required. Maintaining himself has become a kind of chore with diminishing returns. Their last conversation about it ended at a wall. Jack wanted him to ask for help. They had access to some of the best doctors and medical facilities in the world; why wouldn’t he seek treatment? Gabriel had brushed him off, and he’d gone from being confused, to disappointed, to angry. He’d yelled. Didn’t Gabriel want to get better? And Gabriel hadn’t answered, and he’d yelled more, and he’d gone on yelling until Gabriel looked at him and said, without raising his voice at all, “I’m not going to be anyone’s experiment ever again.”  
  
And that had been the last word on the matter.  
  
So here they are, now, with Gabriel standing rigidly in front of his desk, his eyes on the wall, and Jack certain that this will be one of those times that he just wants to be left alone. But then he raises his chin, looks Jack in the eye, and says, “Do you still want to fuck me?”  
  
“Oh,” Jack says. “I— Not if that’s not what you want. I mean, I - yes - but it’s fine if—”  
  
“Shut up, Jack,” Gabriel says, but there’s no bite in his voice. “I already fucking know that. I want you to.”  
  
Jack swallows, but when he murmurs, “Yeah?” his voice has gone low and deep, no hint of hesitation. He recognizes that Gabriel is trusting him with something delicate and important. He’s going to be worthy of it.  
  
He brings a hand to Gabriel’s face, palm against his cheek, and brushes a thumb against Gabriel’s mouth. Then he works it between his lips, nudging and pressing until the tip of his thumb is against Gabriel’s teeth. Gabriel opens his mouth, just a little, and Jack feels along the edges of his canine and incisors. The very tip of Gabriel’s tongue touches his finger.  
  
He says, “Bend over.”  
  
Gabriel squeezes his eyes shut, and then pushes Jack back with his knees so he can turn himself over and bend across the desk. He has to hold himself with his arms at full length to keep his legs straight, and it’s _Jack_ who gives a wordless little groan as he palms at Gabriel’s ass. From his pocket he produces a roll of condoms and a travel-sized bottle of lubricant (a just-in-case precaution), but he's no sooner uncapped the lube than Gabriel says, “Wait. Move the damn glass.”  
  
The glass of water is still sitting on the desk. As Jack leans over to pick it up, Gabriel also re-opens the desk drawer and tucks the tablet and stylus inside. Jack steals a couple mouthfuls of water from the glass (Gabriel just shakes his head when Jack offers it to him), then puts the on the floor, tucked against the outside edge of the desk, where it will be safe from feet.  
  
“Anything else?” he asks, brightly. “Should I put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign outside the door?”  
  
“Just get on with it, Morrison,” Gabriel mutters.  
  
Jack seriously flirts with the idea of sitting back in the chair and making Gabriel do this part: open himself up until Jack can just slide right in whenever he wants. It’s goddamn tempting.  
  
But, no: he’s not going to make Gabriel have to struggle over this, not now. So Jack drips lube onto his fingers, spreads Gabriel a little with his left hand, and eases two fingers into him at once. Gabriel grunts quietly, shifts his legs slightly farther apart, and says _ah_ under his breath.  
  
“Sorry,” Jack says. “Too fast?”  
  
Gabriel shakes his head, but he says “ah” again when Jack rocks his hand back and forth. Jack doesn’t relent. He presses deeper, harder, curling his fingers, adding a third only a moment later. He’s trying not to be careless, but if he’s not quick enough Gabriel will just lose his patience. And, sure enough: it doesn’t take long before Gabriel bumps a foot against his ankle, twice. But he keeps going until Gabriel nudges him again, more insistently.   
  
So Jack withdraws his fingers and opens his belt with his left hand and crudely shoves at his clothes, one handed, just enough to be able to pull out his erection, except then he can’t manage to open the condom that he picks up. With his right hand still slippery with lube, he can’t grip the wrapper and tear it at the same time, so he struggles in vain, feeling very stupid and virginal, until he finally leans forward and waves the condom over Gabriel’s shoulder.  
  
“Can you open this?”  
  
Gabriel doesn’t actually take the condom from him: he just reaches up with one hand, pinches the edge, and tears the wrapper half across while Jack is still holding it. “I’m not going to put it on for you,” he says.  
  
“How’d you know what I was going to ask?” Jack asks, all chipperness, as he gives Gabriel’s shoulder a little _job well done_ pat. He widens the tear across the wrapper, rolls the condom on, and leans over to throw the empty wrapper into the waste bin. Gabriel makes a small, disapproving noise.  
  
“At least wrap it in a tissue first.”  
  
“ _What_ tissue?”  
  
“There are some in the drawer. Same one I opened a minute ago.”  
  
Jack hooks the drawer open and paws around—past the antacids and tablet, over a tin of mints and sanitizer—until he encounters a pack of facial tissues. He uses one to wipe down his right hand, then slaps the remainder of the pack onto the desk, next to the lube and extra condoms.  
  
“Well, I’m not going to fish it out now. I’ll just cover it with some other crap later, okay? No one is going to dig through your garbage.”  
  
Gabriel just snorts, which turns into a louder, sharper noise when Jack lines himself up, presses part way in, and then yanks Gabriel back by the waist onto his cock. Gabriel’s arms partially fold out from under him before he catches himself and straightens again. “Fuck,” Gabriel chokes.  
  
“There we go,” he murmurs, “there we go,” watching the small of Gabriel’s back dip as Jack starts to fuck him. He sets a merciless pace immediately, not easing into it at all, digging his hands into Gabriel’s waist for the necessary leverage. Gabriel doesn’t have any extra space, and the tops of his thighs are slammed against the edge of the desk over and over. He shifts his legs a little wider, stabilizing himself as best he can.  
  
On another day, somewhere else, Jack would gladly take his time with this: work Gabriel over slowly and thoroughly; get his thighs to shake from stimulation; get him to make some real noise. But without the advantage of time, the alternative is just to give it to him so fast and hard that he’s overwhelmed by sheer force.  
  
For awhile Gabriel manages to keep his arms locked as he’s jarred between Jack and the desk, gasping, before he slowly folds onto his elbows—and then, moments later, finally sinks flat onto his belly with his hands balled into fists on the desk next to his head. He doesn’t make any other noise.  
  
But his hands give him away. They unlock, eventually, and start to wander: sliding over the top of the desk, curling around the edge, fingers clenching and unclenching. He digs his knuckles against his forehead, and then his hand slips around to grab the back of his own neck. The tips of his fingers turn pale as he grips hard enough to press the blood out of them. Jack bends forward and slips his left hand under the edge of Gabriel’s shirt, running it up the middle of his back and rucking his shirt up until it’s bunched under his arms. His hand reaches the base of Gabriel’s neck, and he touches Gabriel’s fingertips with his own. Gabriel’s hand flinches away. Then, slowly, he brings it back again and lets Jack twist their fingers together on top of his neck. Jack strokes his thumb back and forth over the shallow crescent indentations in the skin left by Gabriel's fingernails.  
  
Then he begins to press his weight down on the heel of his hand, craning farther over Gabriel and slowly increasing the pressure centered below the base of his neck. He lets go of Gabriel’s hip and braces his other hand on the desk, too, and then he’s bearing almost all of his weight on his arms and just rutting into Gabriel, barely withdrawing between thrusts, rolling his whole back into the motion, pinning Gabriel against the desk with his arms and hips.  
  
Gabriel endures this in silence, jaw locked, squeezing at Jack’s fingers where they’re interlaced on his neck, and then he spreads his other hand flat and slams his palm onto the desk. Then he does it again. It’s not the two quick, successive taps that mean ‘no’ or ‘stop’ - it’s just one single tap ( _yes_ ), repeated. He does it again. Again. Gabriel doesn’t say a word, but the office rings with the sound of him beating his hand against the desk— _yes yes yes yes_ —as Jack holds him down and fucks him. Jack bites his lip, stomach clenching.  
  
And then he blurts, “Oh, God,” and lurches to a stop. He’s on the very brink of an orgasm, almost shaking with it. Gabriel freezes, too, and makes a vague, inquisitive noise. Jack straightens his back, taking his hands from Gabriel’s neck and the desk, and pulls out just enough to be able grab the base of his own cock and squeeze down, hard. Only when he’s sure that he has himself under control does he withdraw the rest of the way. The tip of the condom is wet inside where he’s leaked heavily into it.  
  
“Sorry,” he pants. “I just need a minute. We’re not done yet. Jesus, you just— Jesus.”  
  
Gabriel wets his lips. “You could have finished,” he mutters. There’s no accusation in his voice. “I’m, I’m all right. I’m all right.”  
  
“No, I want to do this,” Jack says. “I want to keep going. Unless it’s not working for you? Do you want me to stop?”  
  
Gabriel shakes his head, ever so slightly. “No.”  
  
“Well, then, I’m not done until you’re done. Can you turn over again?”  
  
Gabriel levers himself up on his arms and turns around while Jack strips off the condom and drops it into the waste bin, though he makes a point of wadding it into a tissue before he throws it away. Then he gives Gabriel a gentle shove in the middle of his chest. Gabriel bends his arms and sinks back, little by little. He starts to pull his legs up, but Jack presses on his thighs to hold them down. As Gabriel watches, Jack drips lube onto his left hand, goes to his knees between Gabriel’s legs, lifts Gabriel’s thighs onto his shoulders, and sinks three fingers into him with a twist. He takes Gabriel’s cock into his right hand, then into his mouth. Gabriel’s whole body twitches. A hand winds into Jack’s hair, right against his scalp.  
  
It’s hardly his best work. He barely takes Gabriel half way into his mouth, letting his hand—both hands—do the rest. He just needs some time to back away from the edge without Gabriel doing the same. Gabriel pulls him back and forth by the hair, firm but not forceful, just enough to make Jack’s mouth brush against his own fingers. Jack relaxes into the simple pattern of movement and the slight flex of Gabriel’s thighs as his hips start to rock shallowly between the fingers wrapped around his cock and the fingers working inside him. Gabriel’s hand slips out of his hair, and wanders down his face, and touches the corner of his lips, and Jack, without particularly thinking about it, surges to take Gabriel’s thumb into his mouth alongside his cock. He hears himself moan—not for show; the sound just swells out of him—and Gabriel breathes “ _fuck_ ,” shakily. Gabriel strokes himself, slowly, inside Jack's mouth, and fingers at the edges of his lips. Jack has started drooling a bit, but he doesn’t try to do anything about it. He just stares up, through half open eyes, at the tableau of Gabriel’s body: the line of hair leading from his twitching stomach to the barrel of his chest, one arm stretched down to Jack’s mouth and the other bent back to palm at the top of his own head.  
  
Jack wants him to feel so good.  
  
He sits back, wipes a forearm across his mouth, and says, “Gabriel, Gabe, can I—?” and Gabriel groans through his teeth and says, “yeah, fuck me.”  
  
He withdraws his fingers and wipes down his hand, then tears another condom open and rolls it on. Then he pushes Gabriel’s thighs open, rises up from between Gabriel’s legs, pulls Gabriel’s knee around his hip, and guides himself in with one push. Gabriel makes a low noise, and Jack hauls at his legs, dragging him forward until his hips are only half balanced on the desk, and picks up the same brutal pace as before.  
  
“I’ve got, I’ve got no problem doing this until you come,” he pants, trying not to stammer as he slams forward. “I don’t care how many times I have to pull out. But if you want me to stop—”  
  
Gabriel grunts and squeezes his legs into Jack’s hips: _be quiet_. Jack laughs and gives his leg a little pat, _message received_ , and Gabriel offers him a contented, indolent grin. The hand that had been in Jack’s mouth has fallen back onto Gabriel’s stomach, and he makes a fist and releases it again, twice, before hooking the span between his thumb and index finger around the base of his cock, not really squeezing or fully encircling it, just establishing a half-circle of pressure. His other hand roams restlessly: down his face, and back up again, and down his neck, and onto his shoulder, and onto his chest. It slips under the bunched edge of his shirt, still pulled high and tight across the top of his chest, and follows the prominent line of his collarbone, until his fingers reappear through the collar of his shirt and curl around the side of his neck. There’s sweat on his throat, and his forehead, and his chest, and the insides of his legs where they’re pressed against Jack’s sides. Jack is sweating, too, much more heavily. Gabriel’s office is always a little warmer than average, and it didn’t occur to him to finish undressing even when he had stopped and pulled out.  
  
Gabriel’s eyes are half open, but he doesn’t seem to be looking at anything. His eyes flicker back and forth along the ceiling, and he blinks heavily every now and then. Jack lets him drift through his own head for awhile, and then he brings a hand between them and wraps it around Gabriel’s heavy cock. Gabriel twitches again, and his mouth opens. Jack barely moves the hand, just letting the pitch of Gabriel’s own body do the work of stroking him off. Their fingers bump together each time he drives against Gabriel’s hips, rocking him in place. It seems to be enough: Gabriel's legs start to shudder against his sides, and his eyes snap shut.  
  
Then Gabriel abruptly bucks up from the desk, jerks his hand out from under his shirt, grabs convulsively at his own forehead, and gasps out, “Fuck - _Jack_ \- don’t stop,” and Jack has to hold his breath and grit his teeth to stop himself from coming right on the spot. He slows down enough to hike at Gabriel’s hips, making the angle easier.  
  
“I won’t, I won’t,” he promises, desperately, though he’s almost trembling with the effort of holding himself in check. Sweat has soaked through the front of his shirt. He can feel it run freely down his back, and chest, and neck. _Fuck_ , please let Gabriel be close.  
  
Gabriel’s face creases as though from pain, and then he’s folding the crook of his arm over his mouth, pressing down hard. He’s trying to stop himself from making noise. Oh, God.  
  
Jack drop his chin, unable to look, but he can’t stop himself from hearing Gabriel Reyes _moan_ into his own arm. Oh, fuck, he can't stop, but he’s not going to last, he’s not going to last.  
  
“ _Shit_ ,” he blurts, his pace stammering, and then he’s just giving it absolutely everything he has, hauling Gabriel’s hips against him as he moves. He leans into Gabriel, folding his legs over, and has adjust his footing to keep from tumbling himself right on top of Gabriel.  
  
Gabriel tips his head back, baring his throat, and covers his eyes with the bend of his arm. Jack stares helplessly at his gasping mouth. They both groan at the same time.  
  
And then, suddenly, Gabriel makes a fist with the arm flung over his face, punches down onto the desk, and comes into their hands and onto his stomach, shaking, in total silence. His body goes so tight that it verges on uncomfortable to be inside him, and Jack doesn’t last even another three seconds. He gives a kind of lurch that brings him up to balance on his toes as he has a staggering, near-painful orgasm. He forgets to inhale, and the noise that comes out of him is thin and strangled. He has just enough presence of mind to tighten his fingers and jerk his hand clumsily, wringing the last of the orgasm out of Gabriel until he jerks and physically stops Jack’s hand with his own.  
  
Both of them stay like that, unmoving except for their heaving chests and stomachs, until Jack softens enough to pull out. He lets Gabriel’s legs down, and then he picks up the glass of water from the floor and gulps down a couple of frantic mouthfuls. Gabriel reaches for the glass, but Jack has to wrap an arm around his shoulders to keep him propped upright as he drinks. His hand is shaking so much that he still ends up sloshing a half inch of the water over his chin, and he gives Jack a narrow look over the rim of the glass, daring him to comment. Jack keeps his mouth shut. He does smile, though.  
  
They clean themselves up without speaking, and Jack hands Gabriel all his clothes. He stays sitting on the desk for as long as possible, and only stands at the last possible moment to finish the job. Then he pushes Jack out of the way and collapses into his chair. Jack kneels at his feet to lace his boots.  
  
In the middle of standing up again, he leans forward to kiss Gabriel on the mouth, and Gabriel grabs either side of his head and kisses him back until half of his face itches from the scrape of Gabriel’s beard. He licks his lips when he draws back.  
  
“So,” he says, “still you think you can get anything done now?”  
  
“You mean, can I still finished working now that I can’t feel my legs? Well, luckily, I got some practice with that in Zagreb.”  
  
Jack guffaws and says, “Hey, don’t joke about Zagreb. That’s the reason I have to dye my fucking hair now. You took ten years off my life there.” He tries to keep his tone light and jovial, but it doesn’t come out entirely right. A note of strain creeps into his voice. He thought Gabriel was going to _die_ in Zagreb. He reaches out to scuff a hand against the top of Gabriel’s head, trying to distract both of them from the slip of emotion.  
  
But Gabriel picks up on his unexpected distress, anyway. He pulls Jack’s hand off of his head, considers it for a moment, then kisses the inside of his wrist before letting it go.  _Sorry_.  
  
Jack laughs, softly, and steps backward to take over Gabriel’s earlier place at the edge of the desk, leaning back with his ankles crossed. “Hey,” he starts to say, then coughs. He knows he should let Gabriel get back to work, knows he shouldn’t stir things up again now that they’ve settled, but… “The reason you’re worried about another solider enhancement program is because you think we’ll be replaced, right? That someone wants to see our command in new hands?”  
  
“Something like that,” Gabriel answers, cautious.  
  
“Well, you know, an early retirement wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”  
  
Gabriel laughs outright. “You'd go into retirement? That’s the funniest fucking thing you’ve said in months, Jack.”  
  
“No, hey, listen for a minute, I’m being serious.” But he can’t manage to look directly at Gabriel; he stares at the floor as he speaks. “I’m not saying that I— Well, I want what’s best for Overwatch. But if a command decision really came down from above, I don’t think I could do anything about it. But that’s just - that’s just it, you know? The longer I spend behind that desk, the more I think that it’s not the best place to be if I really want to make certain things happen. It’s - it’s - there’s - there’s so much that gets in the way. Maybe there are other things I could be doing if I didn’t have to personally handle the - the. You know. The micromanaging; the red tape bullshit. And, look, I don’t say this enough, but we’ve only been able to get this far because of you, and if I ever have to… leave, for any reason, I’ll still do my best to support you in - in any way I can.”  
  
Gabriel’s face has become increasingly incredulous. Now, as Jack finishes speaking, he’s just staring in bafflement. “Jack, do you really think _you’d_ be the one getting replaced? It’d be me. Or, fuck, both of us.”  
  
“It’d have to be both of us,” Jack says, firmly, “because I couldn’t do this without you. But I don’t want anything to jeopardize your position, and if I had to step down, I wouldn’t ask you to… to make some kind of choice between—”  
  
“No,” Gabriel says. “You wouldn’t have to.”  
  
He doesn’t elaborate on that answer. Jack doesn't ask him to. They just look at one another.

“Well," Jack says, after a minute. He uncrosses his ankles. “I'll let you get back to work. Can I bring you another glass of water or - anything?"

Gabriel shakes his head. But as Jack pulls away from the desk and starts to make his way toward the door, Gabriel says, “Hey,” and waits for him to pause and turn back around before continuing: “You've looked real pretty this week, boy scout. It's been harder than usual to keep my hands to myself.”

Jack laughs, but it comes out a little thinner than he'd intended. He touches his hair before he can catch himself. “Jesus, how bad did I look before? You should have said something before letting me get shamed by my doctor.”

“No, no,” Gabriel answers, hastily. “You looked fine. Seriously. Just, uh. I guess the change just brought back some memories, that's all. Good ones.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, how about that? I thought I lost my silver lining, but I guess I still have another one.”

Gabriel laughs, and groans, and covers his face with one hand. “I can't believe how bad that was. God. You're banned from talking to me. Go: I can't be around you anymore.”

But Jack still says, “Good-night, Gabriel," anyway, and Gabriel only manages to stonewall him for a few seconds before he glances over from the corner of his eye and mutters, helplessly, “Good-night, Jack.”

Jack smiles, trying to make it mean a lot of things, and Gabriel's face goes soft, and he smiles, too. Then Jack opens the door and steps back into the real world, where the sudden intensity of the hallway's bright white lights make his eyes hurt.


End file.
